by Debris suspected to be from a Chinese rocket was seen falling to the ground above a village in southwest China on Saturday, leaving a trail of bright yellow smoke and sending villagers running, according to a video posted on Chinese social media and sent by a local witness to CNN.
The dramatic footage surfaced online shortly after the March 2C carrier rocket blasted off at 3 p.m. local time Saturday (3 a.m. Eastern Time) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan province.
The rocket launched into orbit the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a powerful satellite developed by China and France to study the longest bursts of stars known as gamma-ray bursts.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to establish the country as a dominant space power, mounting missions to compete with other major world powers, including the United States.
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-owned contractor that developed the Long March 2C rocket, declared Saturday’s launch a “complete success”.
CNN has reached out to the CASC and the State Council Information Office, which handles press inquiries for the Chinese government, including its space agency, for comment.
A video posted on Kuaishou, a Chinese short video site, appeared to show a long, cylindrical shaped object falling over a rural village and crashing near a hill, with yellow smoke billowing from one end.
CNN has located the video to be filmed from the village of Xianqiao in Guizhou province, near the Sichuan launch site province to the southeast. The video was sent to Kuaishou from an IP address in Guizhou.
Other videos circulating on Chinese social media platforms analyzed by CNN showed multiple angles of the debris falling. In one of them, the villagers, including children, were seen running away while looking back at the orange track in the sky, some of them covering their ears for the crash.
Several videos were taken down on Monday evening.
Witnesses on social media said they heard a loud explosion after the debris fell into the ground. An eyewitness told CNN that they saw the rocket fall with their “own eyes.” “There was a sharp smell and a bursting sound,” they said.
In a now-deleted government announcement reposted by a local villager shortly after the launch, authorities said Xinba Town, near Xianqiao village, was to conduct a “rocket debris recovery mission” from 2:45 pm to 3:15 pm pm local. time on Saturday.
Residents were asked to leave their homes and other buildings an hour before the launch and spread out in more open areas to watch the sky. They were warned to keep away from the debris to avoid harm from “toxic gas and explosion,” according to the notice.
Residents were also “strictly prohibited” from taking photos of the debris or “spreading relevant videos online,” the notice said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from local authorities.
‘extremely toxic’
Markus Schiller, a rocket expert and senior associate researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the debris appeared to be the first stage booster of the Long March 2C rocket, which uses a liquid propellant composed of nitrogen tetroxide and asymmetric dimethyl hydrazine ( UDMH). ).
“This mixture always creates these orange smoke trails. It is extremely toxic and carcinogenic,” Schiller said. “Every living person who inhales that stuff is going to have a hard time in the near future,” he said.
Such incidents occur frequently in China because of its launch location, he said.
“If you want to send something into low Earth orbit, you usually send it in the east to get an extra boost from the Earth’s rotation. But if you sail east, certain villages are definitely always in the path of the first stage booster.”
Most of the rockets in China have been fired from the country’s three domestic launch sites – Xichang in the southwest, Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert in the northwest, and Taiyuan in the north. Built during the Cold War, these bases were deliberately located far from the coast out of security concerns.
In 2016, the fourth launch site, Wenchang, opened in Hainan Island, the country’s southernmost province.
In comparison, NASA and the European Space Agency typically launch their rockets from coastal locations toward the ocean, said Schiller, who is also director of ST Analytics in Munich, Germany.
Western space agencies have also largely phased out the highly toxic type of liquid propellant for their civilian space programs, which China – and Russia – still use, he said.
Multi-stage rockets shed debris shortly after blast, along trajectories that can be predicted before launch.
Before each launch, China’s civil aviation authority usually issues a notice to pilots, called a NOTAM, to warn them against “temporary danger areas” where rocket debris is likely to fall.
Debris from Chinese rockets has hit villages before. In December 2023, rocket debris landed in southern Hunan Province, damaging two houses, state media reported. In 2002, a boy in northern China was injured when fragments from a satellite launch fell on his village in Shaanxi province.
“I expect we’ll see something like that for quite some time, for many years to come,” Schiller said.
China has previously faced criticism from the international space community for its handling of debris from its out-of-control rocket boosters when they return to Earth.
In 2021, NASA lambasted China for failing to “meet responsible standards” after debris from its out-of-control Long March 5B rocket entered the Indian Ocean just west of the Maldives after re-entering the atmosphere .
CNN’s Joyce Jiang, Edward Szekeres and Steven Jiang contributed reporting.
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